


byssus

by lebelinconnu



Series: tapestry [1]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Luxord is a conniving shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2019-01-16 07:13:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12337998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lebelinconnu/pseuds/lebelinconnu
Summary: they have sent him out to darken and steal hearts, but never commanded him to kill their bearers. he is a storyteller first, and in wonderland, he finds a listener.





	byssus

"Tell me a story," the girl says, and the shadow under the tree laughs, smiling like the Cheshire Cat she already knows not to trust. They have danced this dance twenty times over. Would she like a true story, or a happy one, this time? "A true one." She is young, and she is naïve, and the shadowy figure is unusually fond. Few speak to it so trustingly. It separates from the wall, moving to kneel in front of her, in the grass. It is, in truth, a man, glimmering faintly with magic she does not yet know to fear. 

"Then I will tell you one about love, and how very dangerous it can be. A long time ago, on a world very different from this one, a little boy lost his father to a war he did not realize was even happening. His mother, though, was strong and brave and very smart. She sustained them by the work of her hands, and things might have been alright for them, but bad luck pursues all equally." 

The little girl is as blonde and fair as he, and she is rapt with attention. "What then?" He cannot help but smile. "The same things that always happen. The mother dies, the boy goes mad with grief and loneliness. In pain and afraid, he kills the man he blames for her death- but, you see, the man is a soldier, and they hang the boy for murder. Had he but thought more clearly, and not let himself be swayed by frantic emotion, he might yet still be alive." She looks blank, uncertain. The truth, she knows, is this: love is meant to uplift. It heals, and strengthens, and empowers.

The truth, he knows, is this: people love, and they suffer for it. Frail hearts beat with pain and joy, with fear and anger, and so many have found their way into his hands. Foolish, feeble men and women have bartered all with him for one-more-moments, and all were disappointed. The way he is now, unattached, and void of feeling is safer. It is clinical, and it is cold, and it is blessedly free of sorrow. But these are things this little girl, princess of heart that she is, cannot yet know. 

Here, in this moment, he is seeding doubt in her heart. One day, perhaps, the boy crowned by stars will come, and she will look at him differently than the thousands of times she has looked at him before. She may turn him away, bored of heroics, or aggrieved by her own troubles. It would only take the loss of one princess to unravel the fragile net on which he stands. And perhaps, this shadowy creature has motives other than undoing the work of the keyblade wielder. Curiosity will ever be his downfall.

Pale moonlight magic beats in his veins, and for one solitary moment, the monstrous thing that made him is apparent to her. It passes, and the delicate glamour settles back into place. He's only a man, Alice thinks, even if he is a strange one.


End file.
